While pornography harms both men and women, it is taking a much greater toll on men. This, coupled with the fact that men are more likely to commit adultery, is why it is the male audience I will be analyzing.

In 2009, Brigham Young University did a study and found that 87 percent of men looked at pornography in the past year (Women’s Health Magazine.) Eighty seven percent is a devastating number. If that were an electoral vote, it would be considered a landslide. Our society has become fairly ok with porn.

People joke about porn in conversation and it is made comical by movies like “Kick Ass” and “American Pie.” However, not many films joke about rape or a man having an affair. What makes pornography acceptable in comical motion pictures is our condoning it.

While it may seem extreme to compare a man watching porn to a man cheating on his wife, it’s not different. People assume watching porn isn’t adultery because two people aren’t involved, but a man’s motivation to watch porn is the same as when he cheats. It brings a sense of no attachment. You are free from the “restraints” of one woman and get to delight in feeling desired by another.

The definition of fantasy: a mental image, especially when unreal or fantastic; vision. It is a longing for something you do not have. Of course you don’t have it. You don’t have in your wife what you have in a porn star because 1) your wife is not an actress 2) she is not made of collagen and silicone 3) she is not on pain killers. A wife should not have to dress up or role-play to be worthy of your solitary attention.

Most porn deals with the unrealistic scenario of a man in complete control doing (often) painful or unnatural things to a woman while she is ever grateful. The ideal sex partner. The problem is that men get it into their heads that this kind of sexual relationship exists and can be expected. From that point on, he is in a constant battle with something that doesn’t happen in reality and his boring monogamous sex partner.

In traditional marriage vows, each partner tells the other “With my body, I thee wed.” When you use your body in a way that forsakes your wife with desire for another woman, (even if she is behind a computer screen) you break that vow.

There was a time when all a man knew of a woman’s body came from his wife.

Now, a women’s value has been completely degraded. Pornography is 100 percent reinforcement of a woman as an object. Consider that message reaching 87 percent of all men. Porn is the loud speaker in “Shawshank Redemption,” demoralizing a prison of men.

To this mass audience women become nothing more than a vessel for self- gratification. In fact, pornography geared towards men focuses solely on women as a specific object. She is a teacher, a nurse, etc. She is reduced down to nothing more than a few parts and a loyal servant.

With porn reaching such a huge percentage of men (and women) it seems inevitable that men and women get stretched farther and farther apart. The man who looks to a woman for a challenging conversation or spiritual worth is deemed unworthy of the title “man.” He is a nancy, a mamma’s boy; he is weak. This direction could become extreme until our society has reached a state like that of Mike Judge’s film “Idiocracy.” But that’s almost giving society too much credit. Porn has already gotten us there.